Monday, October 25, 2010

Today I re-learned a lesson I have learned many times. Today was a good day. I have been in this situation before on a lesser day and came out worse. Today I felt great. If @quinnyko reads this blog entry she will likely tweet "@egggmanDUCK ARSE!!!" afterwards. I think I am pretty safe though because she does not read my blog as I bore her with my bike ramblings too much even in the real world.

Anyways, back to today. Today has been an up and down day as illustrated in my earlier blog entry. Why should my lunch hour activities be any different? I decided I would do my 5K lunch run, I asked my office roommate Paul if he wanted to run along as he often does. He opted out as he had taken the morning off sick and figured he was better to stay in. I went into the Network closet and geared up for a run. This is where things changed, I remmebered how great my ride in had been and the weather had only improved since. Back into the netrwork closet to swap running shorts for cycling shorts - Big oldschool baggy cycling shorts with built in thick padding and my cheap shoes I wear quite often when I go out on the fixed gear. From here I grab the fixed gear and my helmet and off I go.

I decided that I wanted to take a new route and skim the countryside. I started out of town and made a couple great climbs that I always ride. Next I went straight where I usually turn and took a nice long climb out of the city. It just kept going and going as a fairly easy pitch. Then a round about and into a nice country road with wide cycle lanes. So I decide I am in a cycle lane right, lets take in a bit of scenery. About 1km or so later I am about to go into another round about and uh oh what is that metal mesh ahead? No time to think and pop the rear tire is empty.

Now I am thinking about how I prepared for this ride. Usually Paul has a pack with tubes pump lever etc... Uh oh no Paul and no supplies on top of it all he is expecting me back at the office by approximately 1pm. He knows my usual route for lunch hour rides so if I was missing i could have a pick-up. Hey wait a minute I did not take my usual route I wanted to leave the city. Also I did not tell anyone I was taking this alternate route.

So it's time to run. I ran back along a bunch of side streets until I was back to streets I recognized and back to the work. Luckily I had not gone too far out and only had to do a 6.2km run back.

The moral of the story kids: Preparation is always a good plan.

Now, remember back to the beginning of my blithering. I said today was a good day and I feel great. I actually loved the run back it felt great and the fixed gear stem was a great handle for the bike to roll smoothly alongside. The only thing i would really change would be my shoes. Those beat up old things should not be run in at all let alone any distance.

Woke up slow peeled myself out of bed grabbed the usual Bran Flakes which seemed extra dull this morning. Slowly got my lunch made woke the kids and stuck a hand out the door to check weather. Rain had stopped and it felt rather warm. Check weathenetwork and it is 10 degrees Celsius. The day is turning up.

Had an amazing ride in on the fixed gear with slightly worn out legs from hockey last night. Starting to wake up and get in the groove. Get to the office shower etc... Grab the helpdesk as we are short staffed at work this morning due to late starts and then...So the day that turned around had turned around again. I fired off a bunch of tweets and then decided I needed to think about something different so I could get my head back in the day. I decided to see how Yehuda Moon had been doing since I last read. Appears he had a great weekend... I know what you are thinking now... Wow you are an amazing comic artist and why don't you have a daily comic like this...

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A couple months ago @bikerly, @lovingthebike and I blogged about
sharing lessons learned using the hashtag #bikeschool. The hashtag has
taught us alot. Not so much on technical issues, but more about life
lessons.

We've heard about kids flying free without training wheels and what
this has meant for the parent. There have been stories shared about
mountain biking, volunteerism, beer biking, icebiking, biking with a
family, and we've even had a couple Yogi Berrisms. It's been amazing
and fun to be part of this.

We'd like to take #bikeschool to the next level. By all means keep
sharing your stories via blogs and tweets during the week using the
same hashtag, but beginning this Thursday, October 21 at 9p EST and
each Thursday through the rest of the year, we invite you to attend a
live 60 minute Twitter discussion moderated by either Jim, Darryl, or
myself.

We'll identify the moderator each Thursday on Twitter at 9p EST sharp
using the hashtag #bikeschool. They will introduce a new topic or
question every 15 minutes to keep the discussion lively. If you follow
us on Twitter you know the discussion can get a little crazy. Expect
more of the same, but most importantly expect to make some great
cycling connections and have some fun.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Thursday I received an e-mail from a co-worked who had heard I was running the 10K today. At this point I did not even realize the 10K was this weekend. I had not registered or planned on registering for a running race. I had however tossed the idea around about doing it sometime though.

The reason she was interested is that they needed an employee who ran the event to accept the BIG cheque for 1/2 of the proceeds of the pledges for the race. The race benefits the two hospitals in town. I ran the idea past my wife and it was a go.

I floated a joke on twitter about a two day training plan and got a couple pledges myself. I changed my workout plan for the week from trying to run every day on lunch to take a down day and go for a easygoing ride on Friday. Saturday we did some fun stuff with the kids and hit Oktoberfest daytime activities with the kids. Planned on getting lots of sleep but that was not in the cards as both kids got us up in the night and my son was up at 6:30am.

Woke up this morning feeling a little groggy and grabbed some cereal and showered and got ready. Threw a spare hammer gel in my gym bag with my change of clothes and downed a helping of heed and off to the mall to get my chip. The mall was crazy full of runners walking in all directions performing pre-run rituals. I don't really have any of these rituals so I just went and found somewhere to hang out and stretch before the race.

I did not really know much about where I should position myself in a running race so I started off a bit further back that I probably should have. After the Canadian anthem we were sent off by a horn. I spent the first few minutes passing people before the 1Mile marker and crossed it at 6 minutes and change. I then fell into a pace behind a few people and advanced slowly as they fell off.

I crossed 5K at 22:05 and knew I was pacing pretty well for myself but was expecting to go downhill from there. Turned out I grabbed onto another guy for pace on a climb and when he weakened I passed him and 3 others. At 7K I got a big boost and passed a few more but got passed by some young guns. From 8K to 9.5K I followed my last pace pair in and then gave a strong boost and passed about 8-10 people before crossing the line at a hair under 45 minutes. I am waiting for them to post exact time on the web page but I ended up in 4th place in the 35-40 category. I am extremely pleased as I was not training for this and have never run a distance of 10K before even outside of racing.

After the race I took the family and we all had some good eats provided for the event and then had that picture taken with the big cheque that got me there in the first place. Today was a good day!

I am contemplating training for a marathon at some point but I think I likely wont do that on a whim.

Well that's it for now, I'm out...

(Edit: Looking at last years results while waiting for this years I am hoping that I did not look in the wrong column and get excited about my place over nothing. Potentially not 4th place after all, will confirm as soon as I see it posted.)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Really no words can tell what a great day it was. Loved it out there and can't wait to do it again. 10km in the wilderness was a lot for my 4 year old and my wife with pneumonia though. My daughter was tiptoeing around all of the puddles/swamp/marsh sections in her brand new boots. All enjoyed a hearty serving of ice-cream afterwards...

Saturday, October 9, 2010

After wearing the family out on an amazing 10K hike through the Canadian shield I decided to take a ride while they gathered their energy... I decided to snap a bunch of @bikerly style #seenonmybike shots while I was out. Here is what happened. I will clean up and edit the post once back to civilization....

Next post, a few great shots from the family hike. We will be going back!!! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Friday, October 1, 2010

Today I am writing about a problem that plagues most of us in cycling and elsewhere in life. I got my inspiration for this entry from 2 things. One was a text from my wife the other day asking if my daughter needed a tumbling lesson from a guy who specializes in mental blocks. The other was from yesterdays lunch ride when we decided to take a camera along and mess around at the local bike park.

Paul (pictured above) and I were out riding the 4X, some dirt jumps, skinies and I was riding the Teeter totter. Paul mentioned "One day I have to do the teeter totter, but not today.". I gave him a little push and told him he could do it and we could get pictures. This mental block had been with paul since 2 years ago when he first tried the totter and could not let himself ride past the hinge.

He gave it a try and the first time speed checked a bit much but pushed over none the less. After that he did it one more time smoothly and he was shaking. It is amazing when we can beat the mental blocks we put out in front of us. Now I just home my daughter can get her back handspring...